Invasive Procedures
by Eric Crow
Summary: The Precursors assumed their Kaiju would easily crush the humans. They counted on them to give up without a fight. But there was one thing the alien masters hadn't foreseen – their own stupidity. Cause, y'know, it's hard waging interdimensional war. A series of one-shots documenting the misadventures of some hapless Kaiju overlords.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: The character of Overlord is based off the enormous eye floating in the sky as the Gipsy Danger fell into the Anteverse – however, a thorough search of the Internet reveals no other mention of that eye, anywhere. Could someone confirm that the eye is actually there, or am I just going insane?

* * *

**One – Hydraulic Pressure**

"So let me get this straight," repeated the Precursor Bishop, drumming its spindly arms against its sides as it stood on a slab of rock just below the almost-completed Rift. "From our side of the portal, anything can go through – Kaiju, missiles, whatever we can come up with."

"YES." Overlord hung in the sky above Bishop like a hideous sun, its bloodshot eye staring down at him. For the millionth time, the Precursor wondered how the other creature had ended up looking like that, and if the same might happen to it if it worked on this project for too long.

"But from the other side, only Kaiju, or things the Kaiju are touching, can come back through the portal."

"THAT IS THE CONCEPT. THE RETURN FUNCTION FOR THIS PORTAL IS, OF COURSE, ONLY A FAIL-SAFE. IN CASE OF EMERGENCIES."

Bishop couldn't imagine what _emergencies_ the microscopic creatures of the other world might be able to create, but it supposed it couldn't hurt. "It sounds foolproof."

Overlord glowered down at him. "BISHOP, I HAVE PERFECTED THIS PORTAL DESIGN ACROSS FORTY-SEVEN WORLDS. I ASSURE YOU, IT IS FOOLPROOF."

"Alright, alright." Bishop raised his multiple fused limbs in protest. "Is the scout ready?"

Overlord squinted down at him in disgust, and from somewhere below, in the network of Kaiju breeding and holding pens drifting over the Precursor cities, there was the noise of a cage detaching.

"It's beautiful," breathed Bishop.

The creature was huge, even to the eyes – eye – of the monstrous Overlord. Muscles shifted under mottled green skin as the Kaiju clawed at its prison with all four arms. The axe-shaped turned towards the Precursor on the rock, and glowing orange phosphorescence pooled in the back of its throat as it growled.

"BASED OFF THE OLD DINOSAUR MODEL," boomed Overlord, the tiniest hint of pride in its voice. "AN ARCHAIC BASE, BUT WITH MY MODIFICATIONS IT WILL BE MORE THAN ADEQUATE TO CARRY OUT OUR MISSION."

Bishop inventoried the Kaiju's array of claws and fangs and teeth. "Er...and what is that mission, exactly?"

"SCOUTING. SEEING HOW FAR THE CREATURES OF THIS WORLD HAVE EVOLVED. FINDING THE MOST POPULATED AREAS FOR ITS BRETHREN TO DESTROY. BISHOP, YOU ALREADY KNOW ALL THIS. WE HAVE BEEN OVER THE PLAN COUNTLESS TIMES –"

"I know, I know, but you didn't tell me it was going to have so many _teeth!_" Bishop gestured frantically at the spine-studded monster hanging in the air between them. "Overlord, the creatures on this world are," Bishop held two of his claws a hair's-breadth apart, "_this big!_ Look at this thing! You might as well use this for the entire invasion force!"

Overlord's eye crinkled in what Bishop thought might be amusement – there wasn't much to Overlord besides the eye, so it was kind of hard to tell. "PATIENCE, BISHOP. I HAVE EXPERIENCE AT THIS SORT OF THING, AND YOU DO NOT. TRUE, THE CREATURES ON THIS WORLD ARE TINY, BUT DO NOT LET THAT DECEIVE YOU. THEY WILL FIGHT BACK, AND WE MUST BE READY FOR THEM."

"Then hit them with everything we've got _now,_ before they know what's going on -" Overlord glowered at him. "Fine. Okay, the scout looks good. Open the portal."

On the tiny planet Earth, at the bottom of Challenger Deep, far below the ocean's surface, otherworldly lightning flared out of the ground as a portal to a nightmare dimension was forced open.

"Open the cage," said Bishop.

The bars fell away with a heavy _clunk,_ and the monstrous scout swam up towards the Rift. Blue lightning danced around its edges as Overlord, eye screwed shut in concentration, widened the portal's mouth.

"Is this safe?" Bishop called out as a stray lightning bolt blasted rock off the cliff above him. "Having the portal right above us like this?"

"BISHOP, I KNOW WHAT I AM DOING. THE PORTAL IS PERFECTLY HARMLESS –"

And the Kaiju scout Trespasser swam through the portal's mouth, into the Pacific Ocean.

Challenger Deep is up to 36, 201 feet deep in some places, the deepest point of the ocean, a valley within the Mariana Trench. Tons of water push down overhead, the pressure equalling roughly 1,099 times than that at Earth's surface.

This was the location that Overlord had decided to open its Breach from the Anteverse to.

As the portal forced itself open, Overlord's anti-Kaiju measures came into effect and blocked the water from entering the Breach.

Then the enormous, wedge-shaped head of Trespasser heaved itself through.

It has to be said that Overlord designed the Kaiju well enough to withstand the pressure at the bottom of the deepest place on Earth.

What it forgot to take into account was the fact that as the monster crawled out of the portal, it became dripping, sodden wet.

The Breach analyzed the foreign substance trying to enter the Anteverse, saw that it was connected to the Kaiju, and let it pass.

Overlord happened to, at this moment, open its eye and look up –

If the Precursor Bishop had been schooled in Earth media, it might have likened the event to a Visene commercial gone terribly wrong.

It watched from its perch on the cliff as Overlord's giant eye looked up, and widened in horror, and vainly tried to dive out of the way as hundreds of tons of salt water poured out of the Breach at 16, 099 pounds per square inch. The eye drifted slowly away, the tiny flagella on the bottom pumping at what was probably their maximum capacity, and then the tidal surge of water crashed into the bloodshot eye.

(The following translation left partially untranslated to avoid excessive expletives and to save us all the pain of learning Precursor etymology.)

"AUGGGGHHHH OH MY GOD I'M ▢ ▢ ▢ BLIND! OW OW OW WHAT'S GOING ON? BISHOP! DO SOMETHING!"

At that point, the wave of ocean water reached Bishop.

"_Aieeee helphelphelp – Overlord, shut it off! SHUT IT OFF!_"

Sensing its master's panic, Trespasser emptied its ink sacs, knocking dozens of small ocean-dwelling creatures unconscious and sweeping them into the portal. The Rift read the ink spattered on them, identified them as Kaiju, and dumped them onto Overlord's flailing eye.

"GAH! BISHOP!"

"_Overlord, SHUT THE _▢ ▢ ▢_ THING OFF!_"

Barely visible beneath the seething water and the flailing sea creatures, Overlord squeezed its eye shut.

Lightning flickered above them. The flow of water stopped.

A steady _drip-drip-drip_ was the only sound for several minutes as water drained off Bishop's rock and the surface of Overlord's eye.

Bishop was wedged against the rock face, where it had been hanging on to the rim of its perch for dear life. Slowly, it propped itself back up into a standing position.

"Overlord?"

The creator of the Breach was hanging in the sky, eye even redder than before, an unconscious sperm whale sprawled over its forehead like an off-kilter toupee. "THAT..." it began. "AH...IT WAS...THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN NORMALLY."

"No." Bishop looked glumly down from his perch, where far below the blob of water from the Pacific Ocean was falling towards the Precursor cities. "Ah...Overlord..."

"YES?"

"We may have some explaining to do."

* * *

A/N: The inspiration for this chapter comes from xkcd's Drain the Oceans: this website has a grudge against links, but a Google search of the aforementioned phrase will find the article.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Graçias for the reviews/favorites/follows/etc! It's nice to know that people like the Precursors enough to at least watch them fail spectacularly.

* * *

**Two – Conflict Resolution**

"You're absolutely sure that it's safe this time."

"YES."

"Absolutely, completely, irrevocably sure."

"...MORE OR LESS."

It had taken the Precursors six months to rebuild the portal with a bio-organic airlock system, amidst the grumblings of the alien higher-ups about the amount of resources it was taking for such an insignificant planet. Overlord assured Bishop that that was what they always said, but the Precursor wasn't so sure anymore. The giant eyeball seemed fixated on the tiny human planet – rumor was its parental unit had worked on the failed Triassic colonization, and Overlord was trying to regain its family's respect.

The Incident with the Pacific Ocean had certainly not been a good start to that, Bishop thought. They were going to have to have some _spectacular_ successes in the near future if they still wanted to depend on Cardinal funding.

Bishop had not failed to realize that the Incident with the Pacific Ocean also looked very bad for it. Granted, it hadn't been the main orchestrater of the mishap, and it _had_ voiced its doubts about the safety of an unenclosed Rift, but flooding an entire Precursor city was bad press, any way you put it, and Bishop _had_ been there, co-directing the operation, which made him completely at fault in the public's eyes.

"Overlord, I know we've been over this before, but tell me again how all the safety measures on the new Rift work." Which was why it was taking no chances. The invasion had to go perfectly from now on – better than perfect – or the ruling Precursor Cardinals would cut their funding and it and Overlord would be thrown out onto the streets and end up selling modified Kaiju as sex toys. Despite its drawbacks (working with Overlord), Bishop quite liked its job and didn't especially want to be kicked out into the Kaiju slums.

"AH. THE RIFT...THE RIFT SYSTEM WORKS THE SAME AS BEFORE, WITH THE ADDITION OF MEASURES THAT BLOCK SEAWATER AND NATIVE LIFE-FORMS."

"And there's no way either of those things could get through? Ever? In any possible way?"

"SALT WATER IS COMPLETELY BLOCKED. AND UNLESS ONE OF THEIR CREATURES KILLED A KAIJU AND SWAM WITH IT INTO THE PORTAL, WE ARE ENTIRELY SAFE HERE."

"Okay..." Bishop couldn't see a problem with that. Their Kaiju dwarfed the Earthling fish by at least fifty times. "You still have that thing set up where anything can pass through the portal from this side, right?"

"YES. AS I SAID, TO GIVE OURSELVES MORE OPTIONS FOR AN ARSENAL –"

"And other things can pass through the portal if Kaiju are holding them." Something about the setup was nagging at the back of Bishop's mind, but it couldn't think what. It shrugged it aside for the time being. "And the airlock? Can anything burn through that? Acid, fire, explosions? What's the worst-case scenario?"

Overlord pondered this, spinning its eyeball contemplatively. "IF THE AIRLOCK FAILS TO CLOSE AND A KAIJU SWEEPS A CREATURE THROUGH, IT WILL FALL INTO THE ANTEVERSE. OR IF THE KAIJU FALLS THROUGH ITSELF, WE MIGHT BE CRUSHED AND DIE. OR IF THE KAIJU TURNS ROGUE, WE MIGHT BE TORN APART AND DIE, OR –"

"Alright, that's enough." Something was going to go wrong with this, Bishop just knew it. Overlord's airlock biomechanism was going to start malfunctioning and spraying goo everywhere, or the portal was going to spin out of control and spit the whole planet into the Anteverse. But it couldn't justify any of its concerns without some kind of proof. The Precursor crossed two of its skeletal fingers behind its back and prayed to the Dread Lord Uhluhtc with all its might. "Al-alright, o-open the portal."

The layers of the biomech airlock opened like the petals of an enormous flower, and somewhere far above the duo familiar blue lightning started to flicker. The Breach began to force itself open, and Bishop dove down and covered its head in its hands, bracing itself for a fireball, a tidal wave, _something_ was going to go terribly wrong –

"...BISHOP, THE PORTAL IS OPEN."

"Huh?" The alien raised one of its hands to peek out at the giant eye. "And...it didn't explode, or eat us, or cause a feedback loop or anything?"

"NO, IT WORKED PERFECTLY."

"...Oh." Bishop drew itself back up to its full fourteen-foot height. "I knew it was going to work. After all those fail-safes we added, the thing couldn't do much else. It's completely harmless now – AAGH!"

The portal hiccuped, and lightning blasted down from the sky and sheared a slab of rock off the cliff above the Precursor.

Overlord chuckled dryly. "ROCK ON THE OCEAN FLOOR WAS DISPLACED WHEN I OPENED THE BREACH. THE PORTAL HAD TO READJUST. IT IS PERFECTLY SAFE NOW, BISHOP."

"Ye-wait, you built the portal in the same place? At the bottom of the ocean floor?"

"OF COURSE." The eye looked down in confusion. "WHYEVER NOT?"

"Alright. Never mind." The Breach thrummed far above their heads, a gently glowing aurora borealis. "Wow. In my opinion, we'll have this world cleaned up in no time."

(Bishop's opinion had actually been _This is suicidal, what the _▢ ▢ ▢ ▢ _was I thinking, why did I ever sign up for this?_ but he wasn't about to tell Overlord that.)

"IT IS A START."

"So, what's Phase Two?"

Overlord closed its eye. "I ACCESS OUR SCOUT'S MEMORIES AND EVALUATE THIS WORLD." Bishop felt the giant eyeball send out thought tendrils to it and linked with it and the Trespasser's memories, stored in the other side of the Breach, to form one of the hive-minds that the Precursors used to control the Kaiju or, in cases of civil war, each other.

The pair watched as the brute panicked while the Breach backfired, but not for long; Kaiju weren't bred with intelligence in mind. Its more intelligent overseers would analyze its discoveries.

(_Well, that rules out Overlord,_ thought Bishop, but said nothing.)

The portal closed, and the creature dragged itself out of the ocean trench with much overly-dramatic scraping of its claws. Bishop struggled to make out anything discernible as Trespasser swam up through murky waters, then

The beast crashed out of the water into a seaside city, grabbed a bridge and ripped it to shreds, then proceeded to stomp on the downtown.

"What the ?" muttered Bishop. "Overlord, did you _tell_ it to do this?"

"YES," said the giant eyeball absentmindedly, fully concentrated on Trespasser's memories.

"Whaaat?"

"IN THE EVENT THAT IT DID ACTUALLY FIND AN INHABITED AREA, I GAVE IT ORDERS TO DESTROY AS MUCH OF IT AS IT –"

"_Whaaaaat?!_"

Small flying things were already buzzing around Trespasser, and the beast roared and swatted at them. "IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG?"

Bishop's tripartite tongue flailed futilely in its mouth for a moment as it tried to speak. "BISHOP, WHAT IS IT?"

"_Gaaaaaaaahhhhh WHY?! _Asdfgh – Overlord, they KNOW WE'RE HERE NOW! You just gave them six ▢ ▢ ▢ MONTHS TO PREPARE! _Why?_ Dread Lord Uhluhtc, _why?_ The thing was supposed to HIDE, and SCOUT, and then we'd send in OTHER, BIGGER Kaiju to actually DESTROY the things, not –" In the memory stream, the Kaiju had grabbed hold of one of the buzzing flying things and was smashing it against a building. "Look! _Look! _They all know we're attacking them now! Every last one! If you had listened to me we would have crushed them easily, but _no,_ you had to go blow stuff up –"

"HOW DARE YOU QUESTION ME? I WHO CONQUERED DUNE AND EQUESTRIA? THEY WILL SUSPECT NOTHING, BUT YOU QUESTION, QUESTION –"

"What do you mean they won't _suspect? _You just 'sploded their city hall with a giant lizard! _Look_ at! What, you told it to climb the skyscraper? Every last creature on this planet's going to figure out where the Breach is in a _day, _ and in a week they'll all be dropping poop on our heads –"

"THE BREACH IS INVINCIBLE! NOTHING CAN GET THROUGH! HOW DARE YOU –"

"It was a ▢ ▢ ▢ _figure of speech! _Okay, I take it back. They'll drop things on the Breach, and it'll _explode and take out the Anteverse!_"

"BISHOP, I HAVE EXPERIENCE AND YOU DO NOT! THIS IS A VALID BATTLE PLAN!"

"Oh, and I suppose _dropping a sperm whale on your head was a valid battle plan too?_"

"DO NOT QUESTION ME! EVERYTHING WILL GO ACCORDING TO –"

Orange fire billowed in the memory stream. "OH. OH, MY. THAT IS A BIG EXPLOSION."

Trespasser staggered out of the crater, blackened and roaring. Tiny moving metal blocks on the ground were shooting pebbles at it. "THIS GOES ON FOR QUITE SOME TIME," muttered Overlord. "MAY I SKIP OVER IT?"

"Go ahead."

The metal blocks swarmed over the hills at breakneck speed, and the sun flew through the sky. The orange fire blossomed twice more before Trespasser finally staggered and collapsed.

"IT IS DEAD," Overlord announced redundantly.

Bishop counted to ten in its head. "Okay. That has to be the worst opening move I have _ever _seen."

Overlord nodded, or at least Bishop thought it did, rocking its gigantic eye back and forth. "I AGREE. THE USE OF SUCH EXCESSIVE WEAPONRY LEADS ME TO BELIEVE THAT THAT IS PROBABLY THE MOST FORMIDABLE DEVICE THEY HAVE. ALTHOUGH –"

"I meant _our_ opening move, Overlord. With all due respect, that was really, _really_ stupid."

"FINE. FINE." A cage popped open somewhere below and another Kaiju swam through the portal, fast enough that Bishop couldn't get a good look at it. "THERE. I AM SENDING ANOTHER SCOUT. ARE YOU HAPPY?"

"Will it –"

"JUST A MINUTE. BRIGHT COLORS MEAN A CREATURE IS DANGEROUS, RIGHT?"

"Huh? Yeah, normally. I think that's the rule. Overlord, promise that you won't send this scout to attack another city."

The great red eye looked down at the Precursor innocently. "I PROMISE THAT THIS KAIJU WILL NOT ATTACK THAT CITY AGAIN."

"Okay, good." Bishop turned away, and Overlord failed to stifle an evil chuckle.

"_Hey wait a minute –_"

Overlord colored every one of the Kaiju in glowing phosphorescent colors to make them as impressive and menacing as possible. It also based each one off an Earthling creature, to take what the humans knew and twist it, use it against them. The more claws – or at least pointy bits – the better.

In Overlord's opinion, this one had been perfect.

Manila Bay seethed, and swimmers ran every which way, screaming, as an enormous demonic flamingo-like monster heaved itself out of the ocean, blazing with hot pink phosphorecence. Raising its half-metre-long wings, the skyscraping creature let out a cry akin to a wounded elephant.

Police did not, at first, respond to panicked civilian calls, and the monster left a trail of destruction in its glowing rosy wake.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I wrote "whyever." Shoot me.

Sadly, I don't believe this fic will be updated again for about three weeks (but at that point, however, I hope to have several more chapters ready.)

Is there any canon description of the Manila Kaiju? I can't find any, so I made this one up, but I'm trying to avoid AU as much as possible. If anyone has a proper description of the monster, please let me know.


	3. Chapter 3

A/N: I'm finally back, and shocked and delighted at the amount of attention this neglected story has gotten. A bunch of you scrolled way down through the list of Pacific Rim stories, read this drabble and, for some unfathomable reason, enjoyed it, and reviewed or followed or favorited (is that the word?) it. Thank you all. Here's the next chapter at last.

* * *

**Three – Time Management, Part I**

"I can't believe you sent that Kaiju to attack another city," muttered the Precursor Bishop.

"YES."

"After everything I told you."

"IT IS A LITTLE LATE TO CHANGE ANYTHING NOW."

Bishop grumbled and drummed its fingers against the rock. "So what now? Send more scouts? Blow more cities up?"

They were seated at a table-like stone structure lower down on the cliff – or rather, Bishop was standing and Overlord was hovering a little above its chair. Safely encased in its biomechanical airlock, the Breach glowed and hummed above and a little to the left of them – the more regular-looking Precursor had never quite trusted the thing after the mishap with the Pacific Ocean. Overlord seemed to be going about its business as if nothing had ever happened, but a few red veins still lurked at the edges of its eye. The sperm whale had long since been removed and sent to the Kaiju-breeding complex to study, which seemed a shame to Bishop. It had been a good look for Overlord.

"NOW WE WAIT," said the giant floating eyeball in question. "THE PLAN CALLS FOR ANOTHER KAIJU IN...ROUGHLY TWO MONTHS OR SO, BUT UNTIL THEN THERE IS NOT MUCH WORK TO BE DONE."

Bishop leaned back in its stone chair and folded its hands across its chest. "Okay," it said.

Overlord blinked. "OKAY?"

"Yep."

"THAT IS ALL?"

"Yep."

"YOU ARE NOT GOING TO PROPOSE SENDING MORE KAIJU THROUGH IMMEDIATELY, OR QUESTION THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MY INVASION PLANS, OR...OR ASK ABOUT THE SAFETY OF THE PORTAL?"

The Precursor fidgeted. "No. I was, ah, being a little unreasonable. You're right, you have a lot more experience at this sort of thing than me, and I think maybe it would be best if I stopped griping and saw how the plan went for a while. Of course," it hurriedly added, "I fully reserve the right to take that back if you do something _really_ stupid, like send a Kaiju into a city to track down a single human – Great Uhluhtc, you haven't done that already, have you?"

The great eyeball crinkled. "NOT AS OF YET."

"Oh. Good. Thank the Cardinals. Um, anyways, in that case I'm content to sit back and watch the invasion for a while. So if you say it should be two months til the next scout, okay."

The giant eye made one complete rotation. "WELL. THANK YOU, BISHOP."

"Hey. Don't get me wrong. If you do something really stupid that I think's going to compromise the invasion, I'll call you on it. It's more of a –"

"HALF-APOLOGY? EVEN SO –"

Bishop grimaced. "Ah. I was going to say three-sixteenths apology."

"A THIRD."

"Euhhh. One-quarter."

"FIVE-SIXTEENTHS," glowered Overlord, "AND THAT IS MY FINAL OFFER."

"Five-_seventeenths..._"

The great eye glared down at the Precursor, and Bishop looked into it and saw a hellish landscape of torment and despair, souls crying out in anguish and burning.

"Fine," gulped Bishop. "Five-sixteenths."

The burning landscape vanished. "EXCELLENT," said Overlord.

"So now that the portal's open," said Bishop, "can we link with the second scout the way we did with Trespasser's memories?"

"THE SCOUT IS STILL IN THE DEEP OCEAN," Overlord boomed. "THERE WILL BE NOTHING NOTEWORTHY TO SEE UNTIL IT REACHES LAND."

"Ah. How long will that take it?"

"ANOTHER TWO HOURS."

"Huh."

The two sat and hovered, respectively, at the stone table on the cliff below the portal. All was quiet in the Anteverse. The Kaiju-breeding factory hung lifeless, and the cities far below them slumbered in the midday heat (though for Precursor cities, that was more than a figure of speech.) The edges of their dimension stretched off into the distance as far as the eye could see, all the colors of a diseased rainbow.

"So," said Bishop. "What _is_ there to do up here, anyways?"

"Ah-_ha!_" crowed Bishop as the tiny creature on the board in front of him tore miniature buildings apart. "Mutavore destroys your city!"

Overlord glared at him. "I PLAY FOUR RESOURCE CARDS," it boomed, "AND OPEN ANOTHER BREACH."

"Rrr." Bishop frenetically rolled the multifaceted dice. "Critical!" he yelled. "My Leatherback kills your Onibaba!"

A growl escaped Overlord. "I SACRIFICE THREE KAIJU, AND SUMMON SLATTERN, AND ATTACK YOUR CAPITOL!"

"_Ha!_ Your Slattern landed on my hotel! Three hundred credits, please!"

Overlord roared in fury and wrested control of Bishop's mind for a second, making the latter's Mutavore leap off a building and commit suicide. "SLATTERN MOVES WITHIN RANGE OF YOUR CAPITOL!" it trumpeted. "CHECK!"

"_Why, you –_" Bishop took over Overlord's mind and sent its Slattern to destroy its own cities. "Take _that! _See how you like it!"

"NOBODY," bellowed Overlord "BESTS ME!" Throwing itself forward onto the table, it crushed Bishop's capitol city beneath its bulk.

The Precursor screamed in wordless rage, grabbed the other's tiny Slattern in one many-jointed hand, and hurled it into Overlord's eye. The monstrous orb let out a cry of pain and seized Bishop's mind again, lifting all four of its spidery limbs and slamming them into the alien's face. Bishop grabbed the game board and flung it off the edge of the precipice, then slapped at Overlord's giant iris –

"I assure you, my team will do a fine job of preparing the planet for Precursor habitation," declared one of the three Cardinals on the platform rising from the cities. It certainly hoped so, at least. Overlord was more than capable of conquering a world on its own, but the apprentice was occasionally worrisome. _All planet-conquering generals have to start somewhere, though, _it told itself sternly. Or at least, they would until the artificial skill-transplant project was completed.

"How long do you envision the process taking?" piped one of the other Cardinals, its unnaturally thin face creased calculatively.

The Cardinal rubbed the back of its flat crown. "Seven to nine years," it admitted, "but by the end of that time I can guarantee total eradication of all native inhabitants.

A snort came from the third Cardinal on the platform. "Seven to nine years!" it wheezed. "I have teams that can do it in three!"

The Cardinal fidgeted. "Ah, well, those teams don't always produce perfectly sterile planets, I'll remind you. There have been cases where pockets of natives that were overlooked revolted and displaced Precursor settlements. If you rush things like this –"

"I'll give you funding for five years," snarled the other Cardinal. "After that, we'll have to see."

The Cardinal sighed. The others were still sour about its team's flooding of a city. And they all blamed it for the incident, of course. It was in charge of the project, after all, and it was its responsibility to prevent things like that.

It crossed every one of its fingers behind its back and prayed, prayed to the Dread Lord Uhluhtc with all its might, that its team had something spectacular to show the other Cardinals.

Bishop grabbed fistfuls of credits from the game box and slotted them into its account, narrowly dodging a blow from Overlord as it threw its optic-esque bulk at the Precursor.

"I'm buying fifty Slattern!" it gloated, reaching for its tiny Kaiju factory.

"HOW DARE YOU!" roared the giant eye. "I DESTROYED YOUR CAPITOL! I WIN!"

"_You sat on it!_" Bishop spat. "You cheat, I cheat!"

Overlord growled and usurped Bishop's mind, making him buy two hundred Category-0.5 Tribbles instead.

"_You –_" Bishop grabbed a fistful of the infernal fuzzy things and flung them at Overlord. "_Ha! _Had _that_ coming!"

Glowering, Overlord squeezed its giant eye half-closed and a cloud of Tribbles rose from the table and pelted Bishop in a furry shower. Spitting one out, Bishop reached for another handful of the things, and

Very quietly, and without a great deal of warning, a platform with three Precursor Cardinals slid to a halt at the edge of the cliff.

Bishop froze, one arm lifted with Tribbles ready to throw, two arms pointed at Overlord in an obscene gesture.

"BISHOP STARTED IT," said Overlord.

"Overlord started it," said Bishop.

The Cardinals said nothing. One appeared to be slowly choking.

The five creatures stood there for a full minute, staring at each other.

Then Bishop plastered a wide grin on its face. "Great," it said. "You must be here to check on the invasion. Why don't we go down to the cities to talk about it and I'll, ah, buy you a few drinks?"

* * *

A/N: Wow, Bishop, _that_ resolution didn't last long.


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Important announcement, people – I have a lot of ideas for chapters later in this fic, but there's about a three-year gap between them and this and I don't especially want to just skip over that time. If anyone has ideas for future chapters, you can send them to me through PM or review and if I like them, I'll write them.

(I understand that stories that ask their readers for ideas are usually despicable, but I think a series of one-shots is an exception to the rule. Especially one as eclectic and bizarre as this.)

* * *

**Four – Time Management, Part II**

The streets of the Precursor city were unusually crowded today, throngs of aliens and Kaiju pets and beings that looked somewhat like Overlord swarming every which way, despite the early hour.

Which made it all the worse for Bishop.

In hindsight, it'd gotten off pretty lightly for Displaying Behavior Unfit for Command, Acting Aggressively Before a Cardinal, and a whole host of other taboos that it didn't even pretend to understand. It'd done damage control as best it could, but that only went so far, and this was its injunction.

Still.

"Sign up for the World Subjugation Department today!" mumbled a half-hearted and fairly embarrassed Bishop, pressed up against the edge of the street and hoping to vanish into the wall. "New planet-conqueror trainees always welcome!"

Most passerby simply snorted in disdain. About three took Bishop's proffered leaflets, probably to burn somewhere.

"WAGES ARE EXCELLENT," Overlord faltered, next to Bishop – the giant eye was doing even worse than it – "AND THERE IS, AH, A MULTITUDE OF JOBS, INCLUDING, ER..." Overlord drifted over to Bishop, as best it could with the crowded city streets. "THIS IS RIDICULOUS," it said in its best attempt at a whisper. "I AM COMPLETELY INEPT AT THIS. WE SHOULD BE REVIEWING BATTLE TACTICS, NOT..."

Bishop sighed. "Yep." The Precursor checked its watch, a phosphorescent mini-Kaiju sutured onto its wrist. "Not quite brillig. We still have three more hours."

Overlord grumbled indistinctly and tried to move a loose fold of rubber out of its eye telekinetically. "WERE THE COSTUMES REALLY NECESSARY?"

The cause of most of the alien overlords' embarrassment, and passerby's amusement, were the cartoonishly colored, ridiculously oversized costumes the duo was wearing. Bishop was clad in a giant gray rubber suit meant to depict a new kind of battle Kaiju called a Knifehead – it was meant to be based off some Earthlife creature, but the head looked awfully phallic to the Precursor – while Overlord was wedged between a pair of cups, one on its head and one on its underbelly, with unrealistically detailed cracks lining the outfit's edges. It was supposed to illustrate a planet being split open for the extraction of resources, but, as the despairing eye of Overlord, peeking out from between the shells, could attest to, what it actually did was make anyone inside it look like an idiot.

There had always been someone on this street in these costumes – or costumes like them – for as long as Bishop could remember, futilely trying to recruit for the WSD. Bishop had always wondered what poor sods the institution had convinced to stand on the side of the road and wave leaflets. Now it had found out, but not the way it'd wanted to. The things smelled of sweat and ink sacs, broiling in the midday heat.

"I wonder if we could just _not_ and say we did..." Bishop glanced upwards, at the Cardinal bio-organic sentry cameras floating above the city. "Nope. ▢ ▢ ▢ ▢. Looks like someone before us had the same idea."

"THEY DO GIVE US A LUNCH BREAK, THOUGH...AM I RIGHT?" Overlord boomed hopefully.

"Eat while you work," said Bishop miserably. "Sign up for the WSD today! New trainees always welcome!"

It was an hour later, and the traffic had thinned considerably. Bishop and Overlord leaned against the street wall, avoiding the groups of citizens, occasionally waving pamphlets to keep up the pretense of working.

"So while we're here," said Bishop, opening a phosphorescent-blue container of artificially-grown Polymer with Sulfur Extract, "what _is_ the battle plan for the number of Kaiju we send?"

"THE BATTLE PLAN?" rumbled Overlord. "THE EXACT STRATEGY IS BASED OFF A FAIRLY COMPLEX ALGORITHM, BUT THE OVERALL IDEA IMMEDIATELY IS TO WAIT AND SEE WHAT KIND OF DEFENSE THE HUMANS WILL CONCOCT."

"Um," said Bishop. "Wasn't their defense those giant missiles?"

Overlord snorted. "EVERY RACE WE CONQUER COMES UP WITH SOMETHING LIKE THAT TO BEGIN WITH. YOU NOTICED HOW THEIR OWN CITIES WERE DESTROYED IN THE PROCESS, THOUGH? THAT WILL NOT BE ACCEPTABLE IN THEIR LONG-TERM. THEY WILL HAVE TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING BETTER."

"Ah. Um, okay, that sounds reasonable, but why are we waiting for them to come up with a better defense in the first place?"

The giant eye stared at it in disbelief. "SO WE CAN DESIGN KAIJU TO FIGHT THEM, BISHOP. THAT WAS THE WHOLE POINT OF THIS EXERCISE."

"Wait wait _wait_ wait WAIT." Bishop rubbed its chitinous head. "The whole point of opening a portal to this planet was so that we could have a giant slugfest with the inhabitants?"

The great eye glowered at him. "OF COURSE NOT! WE ARE CONQUERING THIS PLANET TO PREPARE IT FOR PRECURSOR COLONIZATION –"

"Give me _one good reason_ why we shouldn't just send all of our Kaiju _now._"

"I beg yer _puddin'_, mister?"

Bishop wheeled, the Knifehead snout-thing bobbing back and forth, images of furious Cardinals flashing through his mind. "_I'm very sorry excuse me what is it?_"

A tattered little Precursor greeted it instead, arms and legs akimbo. "Beggin' yer puddin'?"

"Huh? Oh. Sure." Bishop handed over his Polymer-in-a-Cup, and the little Precursor scampered off. "I'm not hungry anyways."

"AS I WAS SAYING," muttered Overlord, giant eye creased in annoyance, "THIS IS EXACTLY HOW YOU GO ABOUT CONQUERING A PLANET. I KNOW PRECISELY WHAT I AM DOING."

"Sure, sure." Bishop slouched against the wall. "I still think my plan's better..."

From between the rubber planet halves, the eye of Overlord glared at him.

"...but, um, we can still go ahead with yours, of course. For the time being."

Overlord never quite had a chance to respond to that, for at that moment a particularly large, hulking Ambassador Precursor snatched Overlord's entire stack of WSD pamphlets and lumbered off down the street, chuckling to itself.

"IT APPEARS," muttered Overlord, "THAT I HAVE HANDED OUT ALL MY PAMPHLETS. THE WSD WILL BE SO PLEASED. I WILL, AH, HAVE TO GET SOME MORE."

"Don't you _dare_ sneak away on me!" Bishop yelled, but the giant eye was already floating back down the alley where they had stashed their luggage and spare WSD brochures (not that they'd thought they'd ever need them.)

The Precursor grumbled and turned back to the crowded street. "Sign up for the WSD?" it called despairingly. "Anyone for the WSD?"

And at the edge of his vision, huge against the surrounding citizens, a being pushed its way through and called "_Bishop?_"

The Precursor froze where it was and frantically tried to comb the Knifehead's rubber teeth out of its eyes. It wasn't anyone it knew. It couldn't be. This whole thing was turning out like some kind of surreal nightmare. He'd wake up soon and – –

"Bishop!" the Other called out, pushing its way through the crowd to appear before him. "I _thought _it was you!"

Bishop tried to pull together a sincere smile and mostly failed. "I – ah – um – yes, hello, didn't see you there," it managed to spit out, almost all at once, holding the Knifehead snout-phallus-thing behind his head in a futile effort to conceal it.

The Other, oblivious, seemed to notice his costume for the first time. "What are you doing out here at this time of day?" it asked sweetly. "Oh! You must be recruiting for the World Subjugation Department! How charitable of you!"

Bishop flashed what it thought a humble smile would look like, with a slightly higher degree of success. "Yes. Volunteering. That, ah, of course is exactly what I'm doing."

"Where's Overlord?" the Other inquired. "Is it volunteering too?"

Bishop's mind froze and split into two distinct segments.

_Overlord just left you to campaign by yourself! _one side pouted. _Why would you ever cover up for it?_

_Be that as it may,_ another side cautioned, _you wouldn't just leave it to so terrible a fate, would you? Have some empathy, Precursor!_

Bishop opened his mouth to speak

And before it could do so, Overlord drifted out of the alleyway clutching (as best it could) a fresh stack of pamphlets. "I MUST ADMIT," it boomed, "IT WAS TEMPTING TO LEAVE, BUT –"

Overlord caught sight of the Other, and under the rubber suit its eye turned several fetching shades of red and orange and mottled purple.

"_Overlord!_" the Other cooed. "_There_ you are!"

Bishop cringed. Overlord looked as if it were considering diving back into the alley and flying away for dear life.

"H-HELLO, MOTHER."

* * *

A/N: Someone should totally do a story on Beggin' Yer Puddin' Man.

(Because I don't want to admit I'm an idiot,) I've come to the conclusion that sometimes I'm so derangedly clever that I outsmart myself. Take this chapter for an example: I added a tribute to monster movies with men in rubber suits...in a fanfiction...for a movie that's intended to be a tribute to monster movies with men in rubber suits. Urgh.

The next chapter requires quite a bit of research (eg. trolling the Pacific Rim Wiki, in the non-malevolent sense of the word) so I'm unsure when I'll have it ready to publish. As you were.

NOTE: The overall plot of Pacific Rim will come back into play soon, I promise. I realize this is fluff. Amusing fluff, but fluff nonetheless.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: Sorry for the long delay between chapters. Update, everyone!

(APOV stands for Alternate Point of View, of course, and is a completely valid literary term and certainly not something I just made up.)

* * *

**Five – APOV: Intelligent Design**

The higher-ups muttered amongst themselves, lost in the shadows of the conference room. They looked awfully sinister, the Doctor thought. Not at all the kind of people you'd want to protect you from _giant freakin' monsters._

"Alright!" exclaimed Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld, clapping his hands from where he stood in the centre of the room. "Who's ready to get this show on the road?"

The gathering of the most powerful people on Earth looked at him like he was a particularly disgusting slug they had found on the bottom of their shoes.

"Right then," muttered Jasper. "Um. Caitlin, start the show."

The already-dark lights dimmed further. A square of light shone onto a blank wall, illustrating a map of the Mariana Trench.

"Where our world ends," Jasper began, in what he hoped was a dramatic voice, "and another begins." The heads of state didn't look convinced. He elected for a deeper pitch.

"The Breach!" he boomed. "A gateway through which _monsters _are entering our world!"

David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, very nearly choked then and there. "The _Breech?_" he spat out. "Good god, man! People have _died_ because of that thing!"

Dr. Schoenfeld's eyebrows furrowed in an impressive display of confusion. "Yes. I don't understand what the – oh, nevermind – anyways. Through which _monsters _are entering our world! Destroying our people! Threatening our very existence!"

"We don't have a way to fight them," said some world leader Jasper didn't recognize. Sounded like she was reading off a script. "Yes, nuclear missiles will hold them off for now, but we all know that isn't a long-term solution."

A few other heads of state began squabbling, and Jasper shushed them.

"She's right," Dr. Schoenfeld said heavily. "We are outgunned. Outmatched. We face an overwhelming foe, ladies and gentleman, one that will destroy us if we do not take _every _precaution. But is this the end? Will we go out quietly like a candle in the night? _No!_"

World leaders began muttering appreciatively.

"_Because,_" shouted Jasper, "we _aren't_ candles, we're human beings! These creature's think we're wax-based, but we'll show them," nobody was talking, just staring at him, which he took as a good sign, "we're _carbon-based! _We have no wick! We're not tabletop ornaments! We will tell these monsters once and for all to _take_ their candle-blowing-out plans and shove it up their..."

There was a pause.

"_Whatever the Kaiju equivalent is!_"

The United Nations stared at Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld in shock.

"Alright. Um. Ignore the comparison. The important thing, ladies and gentlemen, is we are being threatened by monsters...and I have a way to stop them."

Everyone began talking at once.

"Missiles!" shrieked Vladimir Putin. "You have found a way to kill the monsters and not the cities!"

"Cement!" shouted Xi Jinping, President of the People's Republic of China. "We will _seal_ Challenger Deep!"

"No," laughed Jasper. He spread his arms wide, and a single word resonated around the room.

"Mechas."

All talk ceased. The world leaders stared at him, bug-eyed.

"...Remote-controlled tanks?" asked Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany. "With some kind of nuclear feature?"

"Nah. Big, walking suits of armor. Think Iron Man..."

The eyes of the heads of state lit up.

"But, like, _building-sized._ And there'll be, like, Kaiju..." He held up one of his hands to demonstrate, wiggling the fingers and making animal noises. "Raaaawr. And then here comes a robot –" Schroenfeld's other hand came up and began stomping along, accompanied by various imitations of clanking pistons and _whooshes_ of machinery. "Psh, psh, clunk. And then the Kaiju's gonna destroy the city – _Raaar! Ima gonna destroy city!_ And then the robot's like _Nu uh! _And then they start whacking each other – _Wham! Clunk! Grrr!_"

Somewhere in a back room, Caitlin Lightcap silently facepalmed.

"And then _kapow!_" Jasper Schoenfeld was winding up his demonstration. "The robot gets this, like, _giant freaking sword,_ and _shwin _– er – _shing!_ It _cuts the thing in two!_" Beaming smile. "And we all live happily ever after."

The United Nations stared at him, bug-eyed.

"Oh! Right!" Jasper ran to the professor and began clicking through slides. "So, uh, these are some schematics for the robots I whipped up before coming over here."

"Ah, Dr. Schoenfeld..." Stephen Harper scrubbed his glasses with a desperate fury. "These are pictures of the Iron Monger and Optimus Prime."

"Exactly!" Jasper was grinning so hard, his mouth hurt. "These will be our shining examples! We will learn from them, and be awesome, and _beat the Kaiju!_"

There was a collective stare of disbelief from around the room.

"So, uh, yeah! Whaddya say? It shouldn't cost _too_ much to build one of these – I'm going to say a hundred billion, conservatively, for the first model – but you guys spent a ton of money on the ISS, right? Which _doesn't_ look cool and fight giant alien monsters? So can we just go-ahead this now?"

Again, stunned silence.

"...My apologies," muttered David Cameron. "I was under the impression that this was to be a _serious_ meeting. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some _valid defence plans_ to discuss. Like Tesla coils at the bottom of Challenger Deep. Something we can actually put into practice without _crippling the world economy for generations to come._ Anyone care to join me?"

"If..." Angela Merkel stood up. "If there was a more cost-efficient version of this machine that would, perhaps, subdue the Kaiju and transport it to unpopulated regions, I might support it. But Mr. Cameron is right for now. This is madness."

Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld muttered the mandatory geek response under his breath. "Hear me out, okay?" he whined. "What's the problem with it? It's the money, isn't it? Okay, we can work with that. We'll, uh, scrap the giant tungsten halberds and accessory power-ups. Hey! David! Don't leave! We'll make this work, okay?"

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom turned, one hand on the doorknob. "The problem," he said slowly, "isn't the cost. It's that you're an idiot."

_Aw, crap. They found me out._

Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld did not, of course, have any kind of degree. At an early age he had sat down and memorized a large section of a Thesaurus one day, and had gotten by on life since then mostly by quoting words from that at random and repeating "Trust me, I'm a doctor." He had in fact got the idea for the mecha off a particularly convoluted hentai, but he wasn't about to tell anyone that.

"Alright," he shouted, "alright, calm down! Everybody sit down!" He was losing control here. Time to play his trump card.

"As you may have guessed," he shouted, "I've already done some preliminary work on the robots. More than finding pictures of Transformers," he added archly to the Prime Minister, still standing next to the door. David Cameron glowered at him.

"I, uh..." Jasper chuckled evilly and clicked a slide ahead. Documents began popping up onscreen, one after the other, millions upon millions of them, fallout plans and alien dissections and resurrected celebrities.

The United Nations gasped like children whose parents have just discovered the candy stash under their beds.

"More _like_ it," Jasper chuckled. "Now, I have a few friends over at Anonymous – just had coffee the other day, actually, chatted about, heh, a few things. Just to throw that out there. Could we have a vote for my idea now? Anyone for?"

Slowly, ignominiously, every world leader's hand was raised.

"Alright! Great!" Jasper Schoenfeld clapped his hands like a little child. "I'll see you all in Alaska. Ooh, and if this doesn't work out, don't worry, I have a backup plan – we'll build a giant wall around the Pacific Ocean."

Then he scampered out, cackling gleefully.

Every world leader stared after him, making a silent pledge that their country would be the first to lock this madman away forever.

* * *

A/N: This chapter's still a little rough, so I'll be editing it in the days to come. If you see any problems, please point them out.

I apologize for wrecking the character of Dr. Jasper Schoenfeld. I don't own Tales from Year Zero, and I feel like I pulled an _enormous_ AU with this one.

Happy (sob) back-to-school, everyone! DX


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Guess who's back, folks? At long last, I'm continuing the misadventures of Bishop and Overlord. I'm sure you missed them. Or...or not, depending...

I'm sorry if you were eagerly waiting for the next chapter (all three of you), but I'd found that the story was devolving pretty quickly into uninteresting literary mush sprinkled with crude jokes, and, needless to say, that isn't really something I'm proud of writing. This is my overhaul of the series – watch in astonishment as Overlord gets character development, and the backbone of a plot begins to emerge from the chaos.

Invasive Procedures is back, and I'm proud of it. Hope you enjoy.

* * *

**Six – Responsibility, Part I**

The sumptuous banquet hall in the centre of one of the finest tower-cities had been procured with surprisingly little difficulty, staffed more quickly than either Bishop or Overlord had thought possible. Now it was filled with Cardinals and dignitaries and monocled Precursors, milling in groups and laughing; exquisitely decorated with models of Earth and snarling representations of humans and – this was the important part – _other_ people in Kaiju outfits.

"And I still say we made a mistake somewhere in the calculations and this just blew our whole budget," repeated Bishop, leaning on a railing and swirling a glass of fine phosphoric acid.

"AND IF WE DID," rumbled Overlord beside him, "THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO GIVE US BACK THAT MONEY AND MORE. JUST SMILE AND WAVE. THEY WILL LOVE YOU."

The pair of would-be planet-conquerors were leaning on a balcony high above the hall floor below, offering commentary on their last-ditch effort to save the Earth invasion. Bishop tugged irritably at the collar of its ceremonial dress. The living garment, wrinkled and dragging on the ground, flapped a few tentacles in protest.

"This is ridiculous," Bishop grumbled, half-heartedly straightening the uniform out. "Do Precursors even _wear _clothes?"

Overlord tipped its head sagely. "I HAVE NO COMMENT," it declared, "ON THE MATTER."

"Uh-huh." Bishop checked its bio-organic sutured-on watch (a brilliant idea, they said. Would never go out of fashion, they said.) "Brillig-to, Overlord. Any last-minute things we need to check on?"

"JUST ONE." Overlord rose from where it had been hovering in front of the railing, turning and forcing its orange-ish bulk through the narrow door. "FOLLOW ME."

Bishop craned its neck, turning to look at the sumptuous carpets and enormous tungsten-plated doors and back to the carpets. "So you're telling me we had money for all _this _in our budget, but at the beginning you _still _didn't install a safety lock on the portal?"

"KAIJU DON'T GROW THEMSELVES, BISHOP." Overlord drifted through an open door. "THE MONEY WE SPENT ON THIS WAS THE REMAINDER OF OUR BUDGET, SANS EXPENSES FOR GROWING ONE MORE SCOUT."

"Do you expect it to accomplish anything? After what happened to the last three?" Bishop followed Overlord into a stark metal room, wires and screens protruding from every available surface.

"NO." Overlord closed its eye, and screens sprang to life and began running through world maps and schematics of cities. "BUT 'FOUR KAIJU DEPLOYED' SOUNDS BETTER THAN 'THREE.'"

Bishop laughed. "Overlord, I didn't think you had it in you. About this, though. Haven't we checked the presentation over already?"

"TWENTY-THREE TIMES." Overlord sagged like a week-old balloon. "YES. BUT THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE SPEECH, BISHOP. IF ANYTHING – _ANYTHING _– GOES WRONG HERE, WE CAN LEAVE THE CITY NOW AND SCROUNGE THE STREETS FOR FOOD SCRAPS."

Leaning past Overlord, Bishop flipped through maps of the Pacific Rim. "It'll be fine. You cue, I flip slides, everyone's happy and they give us money. And puppies."

Overlord glared at its associate. "THIS IS IMPORTANT, BISHOP. I'M COUNTING ON YOU." With a flip of its cilia, the giant eyeball navigated past Bishop and was out the door.

Bishop sprawled in the control chair, checked its watch, and groaned. Stupid Overlord and its stupid planning ahead. There were a full couple thousand light-miles to go before the speech started. Did Overlord want them to just _sit _here until they were ready to start? –

Bishop clandestinely glanced around itself, crept from the chair and carefully shut and bolted the door. You never knew when a bevy of those blasted waiters might show up, carrying trays of Honey-Roasted Skyscrapers. The Precursor shot back to the control chair, fingers clacking over multiple keyboards, and brought up a new window.

In every civilization that evolves in the cosmos, there are always a few members of the species that display a shocking inability to grow up. While others of their kin are working, seeking out new horizons, they are content to cling to their childhood, however they can.

THE ADVENTURES OF KHANSAMA, INTERGALACTIC NINJA COOK

An enormous smile crept over Bishop's face. This was _much _better than fretting about a speech.

* * *

A creature like Overlord could not sweat, but the feeling of terrified anxiety remained just the same. For the sixth time in the last five minutes, it shuffled the papers in front of it, checking that all the pages were there, going over the parts of the speech –

STOP, Overlord chided itself. EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE. They'd prepared for this for months, hadn't they? Even so –

A band in the corner was playing – "_Ooh, Onibaba was a Kaiju/He was a good friend of mine..._" and Overlord tried to relax and get in the swing of the music, but it wasn't helping, nothing was, the speech was going to turn out a disaster and they'd both be fired –

STOP! The great eye wondered if there was such thing as internal telepathy – could the parts of his mind that assured him everything would be fine take over the parts of his mind that were running around in circles screaming, and _force _them to calm down? It would have to look into that later. Maybe it could write a book about the idea and become a millionaire – _as long as it didn't screw up this speech and disgrace itself in the eyes of society for the rest of its life._

Overlord took a deep breath and let its cilia relax. Screwing shut its eye, it activated the noise-cancelling chip it had had implanted. The mutterings of the crowd would only be yet another distraction for it, and in the state Overlord was in _anything_ might throw off the speech. This way the only noise Overlord would hear during the course of the speech would be its own voice, and that was how it should be. Everything needed to go perfectly. The entire event could be ruined by the slightest catastrophe.

Which brought Overlord to the subject of Bishop. The Precursor was well-intentioned, but could it be trusted to handle the presentation during the speech – arguably the most important part? Overlord wondered about sending one of the hired waiters up to the control room to take over for Bishop – no, it was almost time already. It would have to trust Bishop.

GIVE THE KID A CHANCE, Overlord thought.

* * *

Khansama the Intergalactic Ninja Cook posed triumphantly over the vanquished Earthling scum, getting in one last hair-swish before the credits rolled. Bishop's hands slid from the keyboards to droop off the sides of its chair.

The room was dark, and warm from the heat of the machinery, and Bishop felt surprisingly tired. No – he had to stay awake, the episodes aired back-to-back – he couldn't miss the continued adventures of the Ninja Cook –

Bishop's eyelids felt like they were coated in lead, or maybe osmium. They slowly slid shut of their own accord, blotting out the screen.

In a tiny corner of Bishop's mind, a neural pathway tried to remember what it was that it needed to do...something important...

Whatever it was, surely it could wait until morning.

* * *

A/N: This chapter was huge, so I've split it – Section II will be up either tomorrow, or, as I'm at a play tomorrow and might not be back until an ungodly hour, the day after. Review, please, and tell me if I've destroyed the story or not.


	7. Chapter 7

A/N: Second half.

I bet you can all tell where this is going.

* * *

Seven – Responsibility, Part II

The hall lights dimmed, and the band played one last trumpolin fanfare before going quiet. The Precursor aristocrats flocked from the model of Earth and banquet tables to seat themselves in front of the stage, where behind the podium drifted a giant eyeball colored an unusual shade of gray.

"WEL-WELCOME," the eyeball boomed into the sudden silence. "I THANK, WE THANK YOU, WE THANK YOU, YOU ALL FOR ARRIVING HERE AND, FOR ATTENDING OUR PROJECT PRESENTATION AND FOR, AH, FOR – TO BEGIN."

Overlord waited.

It was sure the screen behind it was blank – Bishop must have messed up somehow, _all it'd asked the Precursor to do was to flip slides, _this was the end of all their work – Overlord desperately wanted to glance behind itself and check the screen, but doing so would betray the insecurity it felt, and that would not do. Instead it scanned the crowd anxiously, searching for some sign in the faces of its audience that would indicate all was well.

The assembled Precursors were smiling and nodding and stroking their chins, and Overlord felt a surge of hope. Bishop had done it. They were all right. Say what you would about that Precursor, but when it really mattered it got things done.

Turning back to its notes, Overlord cleared its throat. All the while the audience watched the screen raptly, with the occasional chuckle.

This _was_ one of the finest banquet halls in the city, and the presentation mechanics were much more intelligent than anyone gave them credit for. KHANSAMA AND THE PLANET OF HORRORS, scrolled the title of the next episode. Cameras watched Bishop, spread-eagled in the command chair, asleep and drooling.

The next scene came up, a shot of the Planet of Horrors from space, and the computer system paused the show. If the viewer was asleep, the computer would simply pause whatever they were doing until they woke back up. That was basic courtesy and common sense.

All of the computer's built-in failsafes were intended to make life easier for normal, rational people. The computer's programmers had never met Bishop or Overlord, however, and that was where the problems began.

Now the computer received input from other cameras in its system that the lights in the main banquet hall had dimmed – evidently, someone must be making a presentation, and that someone required slides. The computer's automatic systems beamed the image of the planet onto the screen behind the podium, then paused as it checked every audience member's face to make sure they weren't asleep. They were all attentive, as they should be.

As Overlord cleared its throat, the computer unpaused The Adventures of Khansama: Khansama and the Planet of Horrors.

Unheard by Overlord with its noise-cancelling chip, but audible to everyone else in the room, the narrator's voice boomed out as the camera zoomed in on the planet.

_"This is a planet where your worst fears stalk the ground, where poison shoots from every crack and _da-a-aark_ things stir in caves. A planet of _ho-oo-orrors."

"RIGHT THEN," began Overlord, drowning out the narrator. "I AM, AH, I'M SURE YOU ARE ALL MORE OR LESS FAMILIAR WITH THE GUIDELINES, AH, THE OUTLINES OF OUR PLAN."

On the screen, the camera zoomed in on the planet's continents, which formed the shape of a giant leering skull.

"THIS – THIS IS, AH, EARTH, ONE OF OUR NEWEST CAMPAIGNS UNDER THE WSD." Overlord gestured behind itself with a cilia, at where it thought a map of the Earth would be. "SO FAR WE HAVE SENT THR – AH, FOUR, SCOUTS THROUGH THE PORTAL WE HAVE OPENED, AND DISCOVERED AN INDIGENOUS POPULATION OF, ER," – Overlord glanced at its notes – "HOOMINS."

An image of a fanged, capering red-eyed monster came up on the screen. The crowd gasped.

"YES. NOW, AH, NOW, AS SOME OF YOU, ER, SOME OF YOU MAY KNOW, WE HAVE ATTEMPTED TO COLONIZE THIS PLANET BEFORE, BUT THE, AH, CARBON DIOXIDE IN, THE CARBON DIOXIDE CONCENTRATION IN THE ATMOSPHERE WAS TOO LOW TO SUPPORT US."

A hapless spacefarer landed on the planet's surface, crawled a few feet, and dissolved into a pile of slush. A few members of the audience chuckled nervously.

"HOWEVER, RECENT, AH, RECENT ANALYSIS SHOWS THAT THE PLANET'S INHABITANTS HAVE ACTUALLY, ER, THEY HAVE ACTUALLY RAISED THE CONCENTRATION ALL ON THEIR OWN."

One of the cackling red-eyed monsters gathered up the spacefarer's remains and threw them in a pot, to which they added a variety of lopped-off tentacles and rocks. Billows of green and orange steam wafted out of the pot and obscured the scene.

Overlord, looking out over the audience, realized many of them looked quite queasy. Was it the image of the hoomins that had disturbed them? They were ugly, of course, but Overlord saw the creatures as little more than a bundle of pink goo. There wasn't anything particularly unsettling about them.

"I, AH..." _When in Zorblax, do as the Zorblaxians do._ It wouldn't hurt to sympathize a little with the crowd, especially when they were asking them for large sums of money. "I FULLY SHARE YOUR DISGUST OF THESE HOOMIN CREATURES, AND I CONDEMN THE ABOMINATION THEY HAVE MADE OF THEIR WORLD. BUT, AH –" Most of the audience was staring at Overlord with something akin to admiration, and the great eye suddenly felt confident in their presentation, confident in their entire invasion plan. "BUT, MY FELLOW PRECURSORS, _WE_ INTEND TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS. WE WILL NOT STAND IDLE WHILE THIS WORLD – THAT WE CAN USE, AND TURN INTO A PARADISE – FALLS INTO RUIN!"

A cheer rose from the crowd, and on the screen behind Overlord, Khansama the Intergalactic Ninja Cook – who coincidentally looked rather like a Kaiju – rose from behind a rock.

"IF THE HOOMINS ONLY SEEK TO DESTROY THEIR WORLD, WE WILL TAKE IT!" Khansama leapt upon a red-eyed monster and effortlessly disentegrated it with a laser pistol. "WE WILL TAKE IT, AND SAVE IT, AND MAKE IT A HOME TO THE PROUD RACE OF PRECURSORS!"

Another cheer as Khansama grappled with a band of monsters, punched them all into submission, and freed a band of prisoners tied to stakes.

"AND IF YOU FUND OUR PROJECT TODAY, HELP US TO GROW OUR ARMY TO TAKE THIS WORLD, YOUR NAMES WILL BE CARVED ON ITS HILLS IN – what would be a worthy material? – "OSMIRIDIUM-TUNGSTEN-UNUNHEXIUM. AND THOUSANDS OF YEARS FROM NOW – PERHAPS MILLIONS – TOMORROW'S CHILDREN'S CHILDREN WILL REMEMBER YOU AS _THE ONES WHO FREED EARTH FROM THE HOOMINS!"_

The crowd cheered and cheered, and the lights came up and the presentation stopped, and legions of old rich Precursors swarmed Overlord to give it money. Elation filled the great eye – they'd done it, the funding they were getting was beyond anything it'd ever dreamed of, it imagined all the things they could build with this – new Kaiju, maybe even some Cat.-4s or even 5s, a new breeding station, improvements for the portal –

Surrounded by microphones and monocles and extended checkbooks, Overlord closed its eye and sent a brief telepathic message to Bishop:

_YOU DID GOOD, KID. YOU DID GOOD._

And in the presentation control room, woken suddenly by Overlord's message, Bishop lurched upright.

_"What the_ ▢ ▢ ▢ _just happened -"_

__A/N: Overlord! Bishop! Did something actually work out _in your favor?_ You did good.

I have no idea when the next chapter'll be up, as it's not quite written yet. Whenever I can.


End file.
